Still Falling for California

After spending a couple weeks among the verdant landscape of New England, stuff especially as the trees started displaying their fall colors, website like this I had a rough transition back to the severe landscape of our home in Southern California. This time of year, at the end of one of our two seasons–brown and green–our hills are dry and dusty, the plants are brittle and pokey, and the rocky shoreline is often windy. We awakened the first morning home to the white-gray sky and drip of a thick coastal fog.

But when the marine layer burned off, and the sky looked like this at dusk, I quickly remembered why we put up with the concrete and traffic. I took this photo from a little park near our house called Alta Laguna, about a mile inland and mile up, which is a great place to catch the sun setting off Catalina Island.

This was what the sky looked like if you looked straight up.

About a week later, the marine layer returned. It felt as though you could step out and walk along the tops of the clouds. This is a shot from the same lookout spot where you can watch the fog blanket the ocean and Laguna Beach coastline below, and slowly float inland up Laguna Canyon.

How about this painting! My daughter, Cassidy, is over in India this semester with a study abroad program. She saw my photo (above) on the blog and made this amazing rendering in her journal. I love it! (She admitted to being a bit homesick.)

California, you may be brutal at times, but nothing can match your drama and beauty.